


It Will But Grow

by flashforeward



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Child Abuse, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 14:32:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14083005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flashforeward/pseuds/flashforeward
Summary: Sammy's buried a lot of things over the years





	It Will But Grow

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Deifire for betaing this and making sure my comma usage doesn't suck.

_If you shut up the truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way." - Émile Zola_

Sammy was four when he learned boys don't cry. He'd fallen while playing outside, scraped up his hands and knees, and was sitting in the kitchen while his mother cleaned and bandaged the scrapes. His father was sitting at the table, reading the paper. Sammy jumped when his mother dabbed hydrogen peroxide on his knee, his eyes welling up.

 

He jumped again when his father slammed the newspaper down on the table.

 

"Samuel," his mother said, her voice low with warning, but his father didn't listen.

 

"Man up, son," his father said, rounding the table and glaring down at Sammy, arms crossed over his chest. "I won't have any sissy tears in this house."

 

"Samuel, he's four."

 

"Old enough, then."

 

His father turned and left the room. His mother stayed still for a moment, then finished putting the band-aids on Sammy's cuts before she stood, scooped him into her arms, and carried him to his room. She set him gently on his bed and sat beside him, arms still wrapped around him. "You cry as much as you need to," she whispered, lips pressed to his hair as she rocked him back and forth. "There's nothing wrong with it."

 

A week later, the test results came in. Linda Stevens had cancer.

 

**

 

The last time Sammy properly cried was on his fifth birthday, lying beside his mother on her hospital bed as the machines around them beeped a steady rhythm. She couldn't hold him tight, her fingers were loose around his. He rested his head in the crook of her neck and cried quietly, keenly aware that at any moment his father would return and he would have to dry his eyes and _man up_.

 

That was the day his mother died.

 

**

 

He stood dry eyed beside his father at the funeral. Sat quiet and tear free at the wake. Listened to the whispers, neighbor after neighbor saying what a shame it was. Telling him how sorry they were. Telling him to grow up and make his mother proud. He couldn't say anything. His throat was tight and his eyes burned but he would not cry, not here where he could feel his father's eyes on him. He buried something more than his mother that day, buried it so deep he forgot he even had it in him.

 

**

 

Sammy was eight the first time he kissed a boy. It was his best friend, Luke, who lived next door. They were playing in the yard between their houses when Sammy told Luke he loved him and Luke said he loved him, too, and then they kissed. Innocent and childish. Because that was what you did when you loved someone, wasn't it?

 

Samuel Stevens, Sr. saw from the window. He burst out of the house with a bellow, shouting at Luke to get the hell off his property and never come back. He grabbed Sammy roughly by the arm and dragged him into the house. He washed his mouth out with soap and then dragged him to his room, shouting all the while about how he wasn't raising a faggot and what the hell had Sam (always Sam, never Sammy) been thinking, doing something disgusting like that?

 

Sammy didn't know what a faggot was but he knew if his father didn't want him to be one he wouldn't be one. Because it was easier to just do everything his father told him to.

 

He was grounded for a week after that and never spent time with Luke again.

 

**

 

Sammy was twelve the first time he kissed a girl. He hadn't wanted to go to the winter dance, but it was better than spending the night home with his father. So he'd asked Clarissa May and she'd said yes with this cute little blush, so there he was on the dance floor, hands loose on her hips. A slow song was playing and they swayed awkwardly with the music, looking everywhere but at each other. Sammy's eyes lit on other couples. Some, like them, were keeping distance, others held each other close and tight.

 

When the song ended, Sammy let his arms drop but Clarissa May kept her hands on his shoulders. She looked up at him, her eyes wide and her lips parted. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat in the gymnasium and strands of hair stuck with sweat to her forehead. "Will you kiss me, Sammy?" she asked after a moment and Sammy swallowed hard, pushing aside the memory of losing his best friend, before he nodded and bent ever so slightly to press his lips to Clarissa May's.

 

It lasted a second and when he stood back up Clarissa May smiled at him, twirled around so her dress flared out as she sauntered away to join a group of giggling friends by the punch bowl. Sammy stood awkward and alone in the middle of the dance floor, hardly noticing the crowd of dancers surrounding him. He licked his lips, wondering if he was supposed to have liked that. What did kissing mean when it wasn't your family or a friend? He'd seen some of the older kids sneaking off to dark corners, kissing for as long as they could until the chaperones caught them and separated them. It seemed pointless to him.

 

Maybe he was just too young to understand. Maybe he'd like it when he was older.

 

**

 

Sammy was sixteen when he figured out he really didn't want to kiss girls

 

He and Clarissa May had started dating the summer after their freshman year. He'd asked her out because he knew she'd say yes and his father kept asking him about the girls at school and was he a man yet. He knew he didn't want to be a man by his father's standards but he also knew that he had to be, so when Clarissa May told him one Friday after school that her parents were out of town for the weekend and asked if maybe he could come over, he'd said sure. 

 

He swung home and changed, ignoring his father who told him he looked like some sort of queer in that outfit - tight jeans and a half-buttoned dress shirt. He slammed the door a little too hard as he left, his only rebuttal, then walked over to Clarissa May's. She answered as soon as he knocked and pulled him inside, pulling him down to kiss him the second the door was closed.

 

"Hey, Sammy," she said, breathless as she pulled away. She was grinning, had her arms wrapped around him and her body pressed against his. Sammy's heart hammered in his chest. He was certain she could hear it, but she didn't say anything, just stood on her tiptoes to kiss him again. "C'mon," she whispered, slipping her hand into his and tugging him towards the stairs. "I have something for you." 

 

Sammy could go with her. Could go through with this, be the man his father wanted him to be, had been training him to be since he was four years old and learned not to cry. But he also couldn't. He couldn't follow Clarissa May up the stairs, he couldn't go through with this not because he couldn't pretend - he'd been pretending for so long he sometimes almost believed the lie for the truth - but because he didn't want to hurt Clarissa May. 

 

More than he was already going to, anyway. 

 

He pulled his hand from hers and looked down at his feet, scuffing his toes against the cracked linoleum. He took in a deep breath, hunching his shoulders as he shifted his gaze up to meet Clarissa May's. She was studying him, her brow furrowed, uncertain. 

 

"I can't do this," he forced himself to say, pushing the words out, his voice choking on them. He didn't know what Clarissa May would take from this, what he would lose if she guessed the truth. He only knew he couldn't go any further, not without ending up hating himself.

 

More than he already did, anyway.

 

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry I just. There're some. Things going on in my life and I just. I can't do this. Not now." Not ever, but he can't say that. Can't tell her that he stayed with her so long because he hoped that eventually he'd be able to say with certainty that he was straight, that he could be everything his father wanted him to be. But time didn't fix what was so obviously broken, and the longer he waited the harder this was going to be and the more unfair it was to Clarissa May.

 

So he took her tears and her screaming. He took her questions - _Why? Why now?_ _What did I do?_ \- and he gave her the half-truths and lies he'd been feeding himself for years. _I'm just not ready. I'm not in a place in my life to be in a relationship._

 

And one truth, heavy and painful between them: _I love you, but I can't. I just can't._

 

When he came home and his father took in his rumpled shirt and flushed cheeks, grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. "You're a man now, eh Sam?" he asked, then disappeared into the living room. Sammy didn't bother correcting him. What did it matter? His father didn't want the truth about Sammy, he just wanted the perfect son he'd always imagined.

 

Sammy figured he could play along until he could get out of the house, off on his own.

 

Free.

 

**

 

Freshman year of College was when Sammy realized just how much he'd let his father break him. He was at his first college party, dancing awkwardly off to the side, near a kid from his dorm who kept getting into his personal space. They were both pretty drunk and it would have been so easy to lean in when the guy grabbed his waist, to let the night go where Sammy had never dreamed he'd be able to go.

 

Instead, his stomach clenching with fear and panic, he pushed the guy away. "Don't touch me, faggot," he gritted out between his teeth before stumbling out of the house into the cool night air. He was pretty sure he heard the guy laugh at him as he left.

 

And why shouldn't he?

 

**

 

Sammy lost his virginity his junior year, drunk, in the bathroom at a club. After, he went back to his apartment and showered for forty-five minutes, fighting the sting of tears, his whole body shaking with disgust.

 

He choked on a sob and then it was too much, he hunched his shoulders and stood in the hot spray of the water, truly crying for the first time in fifteen years. He cried for his mother. He cried for Luke. He cried for Clarissa May who he'd hurt for no reason other than to hide from his own hurt. 

 

But most importantly, he cried for all the pieces of himself he'd let his father break off and bury. And he cried for the certainty that he would never get those pieces back.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * ["I'll help you figure it out"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14116080) by [dreamer_of_stories](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamer_of_stories/pseuds/dreamer_of_stories)




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